Three top Obama surrogates dropped the ball over the weekend when they seemed unable to provide a simple answer to various versions of the old Ronald Reagan question, "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?"
How To Answer The Question
The answer to the "better off" question should have been "Yes" without equivocation. Four years ago, America was bogged down in two costly and deadly wars, the economy was losing 800,000 jobs a month, the stock market had crashed, Wall Street had to be rescued with a $700 billion bailout, the auto industry was on the verge of collapse, and color-coded terror alerts reminded us of the lingering threat of Osama Bin Laden.
Under President Obama, we've ended the war in Iraq, created 4.5 million new jobs, doubled the Dow Jones Industrial Average, generated record profits for the auto industry, and taken out Osama Bin Laden. And that's to say nothing of health care reform, financial reform, repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and hundreds of other major accomplishments from this administration.
If Democrats can't remember this history and fail to repeat it every day until November 6, they don't deserve to win re-election. Sure, America hasn't solved all its problems in four years, but Democrats have to stop apologizing for not being perfect and start letting people know what they've actually done. If Americans don't share that sense of accomplishment in the polls right now, Democrats have only themselves to blame for failing to articulate it. The way to change the polls is by spreading the gospel of the truth.
The best teacher of this lesson may be Reagan himself. Remember, Reagan's famous "better off" question helped him defeat Jimmy Carter in 1980 when unemployment stood at 7.5 percent. But four years later, when unemployment had climbed to 8.3 percent, the same level where it stands today, President Reagan had the audacity to declare that "America is back, standing tall" in his January 1984 State of the Union address. It was "morning in America," we were told that year.
If only Democrats had Reagan's chutzpah.
How To Turn The Question Around
Reagan's "better off" question essentially reversed two generations of progressive government philosophy that helped redistribute wealth for the common good.
It was John F. Kennedy who famously encouraged Americans to think beyond self-interest. "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country," he said in his 1961 Inaugural Address.
Kennedy's exhortation to community service over selfishness surely seemed virtuous in his time. But today's Republicans would simply call its socialism. Unless Democrats learn to fight back.
In the 1930s, government helped to modernize America by building the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam and providing electricity to rural communities that had been hurt by the Great Depression. In the 1940s, after the nation rallied to win World War II, government provided college education and home ownership to veterans with the G.I. bill. In the 1950s, government invested billions of dollars to connect faraway parts of the country by building an elaborate interstate highway system. In the 1960s, America raced to space and to the moon by investing public funds in NASA. In the 1970s, government cracked down on environmental pollution by expanding the Clean Air Act and enacting the Clean Water Act, massive new regulations passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by a Republican president.
All these accomplishments were financed by a progressive tax policy supported by both Democrat and Republican presidents -- including Eisenhower and Nixon -- in which the top tax rate ranged from 70 to 90 percent, more than double today's tax rate under President Obama.
But the massive government projects from the 1930s to the 1970s would become vilified in Reagan's selfish and short-sighted America of the 1980s, and that anti-government legacy still endures in the public consciousness.
That's why Democrats should use their convention this week not just to sell Barack Obama or to bash Mitt Romney. They should articulate, explain, and defend their vision of government itself.
Instead of asking us if we individuals are better off from one election cycle to another, it's time for leaders to ask if America is better off by one party's policies or another. While decades of anti-government individualism have made a few people fabulously wealthy, it's also left America with growing income inequality and stagnant wages. Conservative policies may help a few people get rich, but progressive policies enable millions to join the middle class.
Yesterday on Labor Day, Vice President Joe Biden finally gave a speech that answered the "better off" question the way every Democrat should respond for the next two months. "America is better off today than they left us when they left," he told a cheering crowd, thus answering the question but also reminding voters where we were four years ago under the destructive policies of George W. Bush.
That's the short-term answer, but the long-term answer requires us to re-focus the question. Ultimately, if liberalism is to survive and succeed, liberals and progressives must not be afraid to define and defend it publicly, repeatedly, and unapologetically to the American people.
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The poverty rate is at 40 year highs.
During carters term, less than 100,000 homes went into foreclosure. During BO's term, more than 3 million have.
Are we better off? If you answer yes, you are delusional. If you vote for BO, that is proof you are delusional.
It's not delusional to think that if Congress was better at compromising things could have moved faster. It's not delusional to believe that he has made some mistakes but he has also done excellent things. It's not delusional to want to keep moving forward with policies that work in stead of voting in someone whose main focus will be repealign the good that was done instead of focusing on pushing uphill.
Is it easier to get or keep a job when the economy is shedding 800,000 jobs, the economy is shrinking, and he stock market is in a free fall or when the economy is adding 130,000 jobs, the economy has grown every month for nearly 3 straight years, and the stock market is rising.
Oh wait, thats right, Ryan doesn't let little things like "The Truth" bother him.
Of course, they tell the lies to make it sound like we aren't better off too...
Taxes on the wealthy were high (70%), so Reagan had something to cut (after Carter cut capital gains). Now, tax rates are low and further cuts will cripple the US unless they go to the middle class (which Romney won't do). The promise of recovery through tax cuts is a smoke screen.
Inflation was high - now we're struggling to get out of recession. The measures used to get us out of recession then (lowered interest rates) aren't working as well now.
Carter presided over things like an oil crisis, "stagflation," Arab-Israeli peace talks, the USSR invading Afghanistan, nuclear arms reduction talks, and the Iran hostage crisis, all things that had people worried and feeling they weren't better off.
Romney doesn't have the tools Reagan did to make things better so his use of that question is silly. Yes, we're better off. Yes, we're going in the right direction to recovery. Yes, we did and we will.
And if he becomes president, we won't be. At least, 99% of us won't be.
Check out this website, enter some facts (anonymously) and see how much worse things will be FOR YOU under Romney's fiscal policies.
https://www.politify.com/
No, and getting worse by the month.
Out here in western Washington state, our home prices have dropped another 7.4% in eight months this year, and no end of decline in sight. Gas is the highest in the lower 48 states and our groceries have gone up 30% in the last year. Can't refinance the house because it's nearly underwater. And our manufacturing business is running on one cylinder - even government orders have vanished.
Recession over? That's a laugh...
And that's bad because...he's practicing Republicanism without a license? What creates high paying jobs is an educated workforce that unions empower through collective bargaining. Republicans oppose unions, and their polices will weaken our educational system.
We are continuing $1.3 trillion dollar deficits and debt just eclipsed $16 trillion . . . that's an all time record.
Don't try and tell us the sky isn't blue, just stick with the we're not Romney theme, it's all you've really got.
Am I worse off? NO. And I credit Obama and is empathy for those who are hardest hit with the recession.
The wealthy have been waging a war on the middle class for decades. They will continue to do so until the average citizen wakes up and realizes what their agenda really is. To put it simply, they want to own everything. They want you to pay and pay and pay some more. And shut up.
The GOP candidate believes wealth is a sign of god's favor. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Any average Joe who votes GOP in this upcoming election is voting against the America that promotes opportunity for all.
As individuals, a lot of us are not.
I can't understand people who are going to vote against their own interests just because their party promises to prevent women from exercising a lawful right, and throw around the word "God" more than the other one does.
How many of them will be personally affected by that? But they'll sure be in pain if R/R have the reins.
-- ML from Miami
Are we living in the same world?
I don’t know if Ryan knows what he is talking about, but now he is praising Clinton – and rightly so! Clinton proved that the Republicans don’t have the foggiest idea how to run the economy. While it is true that Reagan did create some jobs it should be mentioned, however, that Clinton created more and produced a balanced budget. It should also be noted that the Republicans were totally against Clinton’s initiatives.
Besides Reagan commendable job creation, he and Bush1 tripled the debt – which by the way we are still paying interest on. Job creation accomplished by the Bushes was two disasters. I think Bush2 created more debt than Bush1
So it is evident that Republicans are only effective as debt creators.
Try fleshing your generalities with a few facts.
Are You Better Off Now? How To Answer A Simple Question
I was surprised when I heard the question: Are you better off now than you were four years ago? I was surprised that the Republicans asked it. I was surprised that the Democrats had such a hard time answering it. I was surprised at how inept the media was at comprehending the potential of the question. I was surprised at how the public didn’t sense the importance of the question; particularly with regard to how powerful it could be if even remotely understood correctly.
I wasn’t really surprised; surprise would be if even one of these groups did something that wasn’t inept. So with the question out there and being bantered about in the media, and used by both parties as a bludgeon trying to hammer out a meaning that suits their purpose: one offensively and one defensively.
What then is the answer to this question?
The answer is – Noooo, I can’t tell you that. How could you learn if someone just gave you the answer? It’s not the American way to be given things. You’re supposed to earn them for yourself. Besides the value comes from what it takes to attain something. So here are hints to the obvious that lead any thinking person to the right answer.
First, think of the question in the context of a scientific or engineering problem, or if that’s not
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